Item 1 of 4 shows the CN Macmillan yard in Vaughan, Ontario, following the failure of Canadian National Railway (CN) and Canadian Pacific Kansas City (CPKC) negotiations with a major union in Vaughan, Ontario. Canada August 22, 2024. REUTERS/Carlos Osorio
Aug 22 (Reuters) – Canada’s top two railroads have locked out more than 9,000 unionized workers, triggering an unprecedented train stoppage that could cost billions of dollars in economic damage and cripple North American supply chains.
“Throughout this process, both CN and CPKC have shown they are willing to compromise rail safety and separate families to make extra money,” said Paul Boucher, president of the Teamsters Canadian Rail Conference (TCRC), as negotiations continue.
Both railroads said they had negotiated in good faith and offered several benefits along with better pay and working conditions.
“Despite our best efforts, it is clear that a negotiated settlement with the TCRC is not within reach,” CPKC said.
The Canadian government has so far asked the railroads and the union to come together to reach an agreement, choosing not to use its power to refer the dispute to binding arbitration.
Teamsters Canada president Francois Laporte told reporters outside CN’s Montreal headquarters that he doesn’t expect the government to push workers into arbitration.
“We believe this matter should be resolved at the bargaining table,” Laporte said before the striking CN workers. “We don’t trust a third party to decide what these people’s working conditions will be.”
But disruptions mounted.
Tens of thousands of people who rely on some commuter rail lines to Toronto, Vancouver and Montreal were affected by the shutdown as all train operations on these CPKC-owned lines were halted.
“The train stoppage at CN and CBKC has already cost workers, transit users and businesses across the country, and we cannot allow things to get worse,” Ontario Premier Doug Ford said in a post on social media platform X.
Both companies said they would lock out workers at 1201 ET Thursday morning.
Dead end
The strike by thousands of workers, including conductors, locomotive engineers and yard workers across Canada, is largely rooted in demands for better working hours and a better work-life balance.
This comes after the Canadian government introduced new duty and retirement rules in 2023.
CN said workers would have to stay on duty for up to 12 hours to comply with government regulations, which it said would improve productivity.
But CN workers now have 10-hour shifts a day, and the Teamsters don’t want to loosen those conditions.
CN engine engineers on the picket line expressed concern over long work shifts and the company’s current attempt to halve the 24-hour rest period after returning home.
Most of the younger workers at CN work on-call, they said, and must go on two hours’ notice to pack the road’s worth of food.
“What we want is working conditions, whether it’s a train operator, whether it’s an engineer, a conductor… to make sure they get a proper retirement,” Laporte said.
Analysts said the strike has benefited both railroads.
“Our rough calculations show that each day under strike/strike would impact CN’s earnings per share by ~C$0.04 and CP’s earnings by ~C$0.02,” Desjardins analyst Benoit Poirier wrote in a note earlier this week.
Shares of CN and CPKC were down about 0.5% in early trade.
($1 = 1.3587 Canadian dollars)
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Reporting by Abhinav Parmar, Jahnavi Nidumolu, and additional reporting by Nathan Gomez in Bangalore and Ismail Shakil in Ottawa; Written by Abhijith Ganavaparam; Edited by David Lungren, Rod Nickell, Jamie Freed, Jacqueline Wong, and Sriraj Kalluvila
Our Standards: Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.